president obama and speaker boehner were unable to reach a debt deal in 2001. one of the by-products of the inaction was a downgrade of the country's credit rating. could this happen again? and what would it mean for the nation's financial standing across the globe? joining me is jared bernstein, senior fellow at the center for budget policies and priorities. good to see you again, when it comes to the credit rating, we've seen it happen before. all three credit rating agencies are saying you've got to put a deal together in washington, if you guys in washington don't get it done, we're going to downgrade your credit. >> we've seen this movie before. it's not a good movie. i will remind viewers that the last time standard and poors did take us down a notch, it actually didn't hurt our ability to finance our debt at all. so that was kind of blown off by the markets, but this time could be different. there's one interesting wrinkle here. i do believe that if the political discourse, which is actually sounding a little better lately breaks down, everything is dysf